Systems Design for Health System Reform

Joachim P. Sturmberg ()
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Joachim P. Sturmberg: University of Newcastle

Chapter 29 in Handbook of Systems Sciences, 2021, pp 735-764 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract There is a significant need for reforming healthcare systems in most contexts worldwide, and radical proposals based on complexity science and systems thinking are necessary. Health systems around the world are failing on three fronts – they fail to meet the needs of people/patients, they are disease-focused rather than health centered, and they are economically unsustainable. Failed/failing systems cannot be reformed by incremental cost-management or policy changes; they need to be redesigned based on peoples/patients’ needs – these are far broader than disease-specific management and include social, community, work, and environmental domains. Embracing these insights is a major challenge for policy makers, not only do they have to convey the direction, they also have to facilitate the necessary adaptive work required by a large and diverse workforce within the health system and its institutions. Health system redesign, while not easy, is possible. The organizational change management literature provides the foundations to lead the process, and the complex adaptive systems literature provides the conceptual understanding of the dynamic interdependencies within and across the organizational scales of the health system. And finally, there are a number of examples that can guide the redesign process toward effective, efficient, and sustainable health systems.

Keywords: Health system reform; Health system redesign; Complex adaptive systems; Organizational complexity; Complex adaptive organizations; Design thinking; System sciences; Philosophy of health; Healthcare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-15-0720-5_56

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-0720-5_56

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